People wear protective headgear or helmets to help prevent head injuries. In many cases, the headgear also includes a face shield, cage, or visor that attaches to the headgear to provide additional protection for a person's face and eyes. By way of example, ice hockey players regularly wear a protective helmet with a face shield, cage, or visor to protect their heads and faces from possible injuries due to impact with objects such as the ice surface, other players, the boards, the puck, and sticks.
Conventionally, multiple mechanical fasteners, such as screws, are used to attach the face shield to each side of the helmet. Each screw passes through corresponding holes formed in the face shield and helmet, and into respective threaded nuts disposed on the inside of the helmet. However, attaching a face shield to a helmet using such conventional hardware is problematic and frustrating. Specifically, face shields are usually manufactured from a high impact-resistant, clear plastic. Although they generally conform to the shape of the front of the helmet to surround the front of a player's face, the terminal ends of the shield tend to bias outwardly away from the exterior surface of the helmet. This biasing force resists a user's efforts at initially attaching the face shield to the helmet. Additionally, when removing the face shield, the biasing force may “fling” the screws and/or other mounting assembly components away from the helmet if the user does not carefully prevent this from happening.